Fail to plan, plan to...

PS. I didn't make the the dinner above, my mom did.
It's not health food, but It's too pretty not to show.

...drive yourself nuts at dinner time. I know, it's not how the saying usually goes; but, it's the truth, isn't it? Monday comes around every week, there's no getting around it. If I don't have our weekly dinners planned out by the time I go to the grocery on Sunday or Monday, I'm hosed. Here's the deal. When you take three or four small children to the supermarket with you, you lose all ability to think and comprehend information. There's a whole lot of, "mommy, can we get this?" from the kids and plenty of, "what are we here for again?" from me. I end up leaving with enough good food to make one dinner, bananas, and eleventybillion dollars worth of cookies and juice boxes. It never fails. Never. The problems don't stop at the checkout, though. Once dinner time hits on those six nights that I'm now unprepared for, we usually end up eating something quickly with whatever is in the house or we go out. This failure to plan usually also means I'm going to blow my diet (because by the time we all agree on where we're going I'm STARVING). It's kind of like buying something and unnecessarily spending a bunch of money because you haven't done your research to find the best deal.

One way to combat grocery store grief is to make a meal plan ahead of your shopping trip. Now, I'm not the most organized mama on the block, and sometimes I put things away in super unconventional spots, but I know where everything is (except my oldest child's class shirt that went missing the day she needed it, less than a week after we had it; but, that's another blog post all together), but I can make a meal plan! I know some mamas have best-loved recipes that they rotate in throughout the month and then there are some that make something different all the time. I do a little of both. I like to pick a few good standby recipes and then hang out on Pinterest to gather up the rest. I love culinary experiments. Since I get a lot of recipe requests from folks looking to update their menu options, I thought I'd start sharing our weekly meal plan each week like some other bloggers do. If you like it, let me know! I'll keep posting it. It will give me accountability to get this plan done in a timely manner and will hopefully give you some new dinner ideas as well.

Check out this week's!

Monday - Taco Bake
Tuesday - Dinner Out with Family
Wednesday - Chicken Cacciatore
Thursday - Pasta with Meat Sauce
Friday - Dinner Out
Saturday - Crockpot BBQ Chicken and Carrot Chips
Sunday - Dinner Out with Family

Hope this post gave you some grocery run relief this week! :)